Il lupo nei nomi di luogo di tradizione orale del Piemonte montano

Wolf has always been a protagonist of the European imagination from which hundreds of myths, tales and legends have sprung over the centuries. Even toponymy preserves the memory of this animal, which recently populates our forests again. This study focuses on wolf-related place names of oral tradition collected in the mountain areas of Piedmont by the Toponymic Atlas of Alpine Piedmont, and now enhanced by the research project ORME (On the Trails of the Large Carnivores: real and virtual itineraries between linguistic and ethnographic knowledge). The authors illustrate the role this animal has played in anthropic reality through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of dialectal toponyms, their referents and the popular narratives related to them. In particular, the focus will be centred on popular representations of the animal reflected in the local toponymy to reconstruct the complex system of relationships developed over time between man and wolfs.